If you happened to stumble upon the Plex app in the Play Store today, you might have noticed that it’s Free and not the normal $4.99 price. No, Plex isn’t running a sale. They just changed their model in that the app will now offer in-app purchases, and there will no longer be the need for a separate app for Plex Pass members.

Up until today, Plex Pass members needed to download the Plex for Plex Pass app in order to enjoy the benefits of their membership, while basic Plex members needed to only download the basic Plex app. That has all changed today as all users only need to download the basic Plex app. If you’re a Plex Pass member, you will still get all the member benefits. All you have to do is log into your account, and the app will recognize your subscription status. The Plex for Plex Pass app is still in the Play Store, but it’s only there to notify (in the What’s New section) current users that they should start using the basic Plex app from now on.

There are many services out there to handle personal media libraries, but Plex is one of the leaders in the space. It acts as a media center pushing videos, photos, and music to a multitude of devices. The service has long been really powerful for managing videos and photos. Now, audio content is being focused on as the service evolves. Alongside its audio fingerprinting technology, Plex will use Gracenote for enhanced music recognition and artist information. This will allow Plex to better understand the sound without having the original source. With Gracenote behind it, Plex will compose Plex Mix playlists. Then, Plex Pass subscribers can have their music matched with corresponding videos from Vevo.

Amazon has just kicked off its Christmas Appstore promotion, which enables you to grab a possible $220 worth of applications for free. Many of this year’s must-have paid apps and games are included in the giveaway, such as Angry Birds Space, Colin McRae Rally, Djay 2, Fleksy Keyboard, Plex and many more.

Hit the break below to see a full list of content that’s available for free up until Friday, December 26.

Plex for Plex Pass got a pretty sizable update today. Those of you with a Nexus Player or ADT-1 will love the integration with global search. One of the biggest complaints with Android TV has been the fact that searching for content from within the global search only yields results from Play Movies & TV. The good news is that apps can integrate with global search as long as developers add a few lines of code to their apps.

The Chromecast is a great tool for slinging your media to a bigger screen from your phone. We’ve already covered ways to get the local content on your devices to a Chromecast, but many users still play media from a local network so they don’t have to worry about cluttering up device storage with music and videos. It’s convenient to store all of your large files on a bigger hard drive instead of keeping them split up across multiple SD cards.

This guide is going to go over the easiest ways to start casting your networked music, photos, and videos to go along with all of your local pictures and internet subscriptions.

Sharing a single account with family or friends can be rather frustrating. Content, preferences, and settings for one user gets intertwined with another and the entire experience goes sour. Many services now are making a shift to support multi-user accounts. The latest to do so is Plex. With Plex Home, there is full control of who can do what with the service. Content can be shared with specified users and parental controls are in place so nothing gets seen by the unintended. User switching is fast, so there is no waiting around for the service to load everything.

Unique usernames, passwords, email addresses, and passwords are not required with Plex Home. There is PIN protection in case you want to provide privacy to users.

Features are available to non-subscribers of the premium Plex Pass. Anyone with a Plex account has access to multi-user support and “Now Playing.” It allows everyone sharing an account to have their own experience with a viewing history.

I can’t emphasize enough how amazing Plex is for streaming your own content to your mobile devices or your TV via Chromecast / Android TV. Not to mention that it’s also compatible with Apple TV and the Xbox.

If you have been thinking of jumping into the Plex world, today is your lucky day because the Android app is on sale for $1.99, which is a discount of $3.00. You will need the install the Plex Media Server on your computer, but that’s free. We’re not sure how long this sale will last, but I wouldn’t hesitate. We have the download links after the break.

Plex, the service that serves already-owned user content to a multitude of devices, announced today that it will have a home on Android TV. More specifically, the company expressed excitement that it would be available on the new Nexus Player. Plex has been working with Google since April to get the service up and running in time for the launch of Android TV.

Here is what Plex said in a blog post:

We’re really enjoying the fresh take that Android TV brings to the table: bold, clean UI designed from the ground up for “lean back” viewing from your couch, and custom home screen recommendations based on your viewing habits are right up our alley, and they mean that Plex and Android TV are a perfect fit.

We would have to assume this means that Plex is going to be available at launch. The Nexus Player goes up for pre-order on October 17.

If you use Plex (and Plex Pass) you probably know there’s a feature where you can automatically upload photos into your Plex picture library. If you like the feature, you’ll be happy to know that the feature is finally available in the Android Plex app.

You’ll still need to subscribe to Plex Pass, but otherwise the feature works pretty flawlessly. It’ll automatically upload any new photos on your device to your Plex library to be viewed on any other device you use. Pretty handy.

When Plex first added Chromecast support to their app, it came with a caveat – users had to signup for the PlexPass subscription service to cast media. That is changing with an update to the app that is rolling out to Google Play. Now, anyone using Plex can cast media to their Chromecast device. Although casting support is now available to all users, PlexPass or no, Plex is still not a free solution. Read more